If you were to buy a 2003 Cadillac Escalade ESV near North Caldwell, New Jersey, you’d expect to shell out nearly $10,000 for an exceptionally clean ride from a dealer, according to Edmunds. Yet, this particular example of GM’s brashly designed full-size SUV sold for nearly 12 times that amount: $119,780.

Why?

Well, this one was driven by a garbage man.

This particular Escalade ESV was featured in the final three seasons of “The Sopranos” with none other than Tony himself, the late James Gandolfini. The vehicle is signed by Gandolfini in three separate locations inside because one of anything isn’t enough for anyone who buys an Escalade.

After bidding ended on November 20, the winning bidder was stuck with a $119,780 bill to take the Escalade home and probably never drive it.

According to the auction house responsible for the sale, Boston-based RR Auctions, this is the highest price ever garnered by a vehicle from “The Sopranos”. The previous record was held by a 1999 Chevrolet Suburban that sold for $110,000 in 2013.

It’s probably going into a car museum and thus 120K is an investment into long-term relevance. It’s a shame Gandolfini passed since he was an excellent actor. Still a wonderful reminder of a great show.

I think my favorite film Gandolfini had a role is “The Last Castle” opposite Robert Redford followed by his role as scumbag Eddie Poole in “8mm” and his minor role in “True Romance”. I highly recommend “The Last Castle” if you haven’t seen it, a very classy film.

Trivia Fact: Gary Oldman met with Director Tony Scott about the project and told him he hadn’t read the script he’d been sent, then asked Scott what his part was like. Scott told him “You’re playing a white guy who thinks he’s black, and you’re a pimp.” Oldman immediately accepted the role.

In the world of crime shows, his Firebird was as iconic as any Ferrari 308 or Daytona – and I want one. I’d also like Jesse Pinkman’s Tercel 4×4. I don’t care if this Escalade has Hollywood provenance, Escalades are a Bro conveyance, and that’s uncool. http://jalopnik.com/the-sale-of-jesse-pinkmans-breaking-bad-car-will-hel-1137890497

Cadillac makes the finest vehicles, capable of matching or exceeding the refinement, precision, reliability, prestige, comfort, performance, fit & finish, NVH parameters, and other important criteria of the very best from Germany or Japan (and certainly need not worry about the Koreans), at this or any other price point.

And Cadillac has Millennial chicks voicing “the Arena” speeches as slow moving SRXs & Art & Science ATSs are lease-special advertised rolling through SoHo, so Cadillac is not as much product as hipster brand, now, too.

It’s supposed to be one 13-episode season. It certainly doesn’t rise to the greatness of the first season. I’m not sure it can hang with the other seasons. I’m just too invested to quit at this point. Nice to see some of the old characters though.

As far as I know, the following HBO shows are on Prime:
The Wire, Rome, Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Band of Brothers, Oz, In Treatment, and Eastbound & Down.

Sinatra, Dean Martin, Elvis, Eastwood, Shaft, Huggie Bear, Bogart and other real MEN drove bold, powerful, comfortable, spacious, V8 powered AMERICAN Cadillacs once upon a time, not Asian-American interior decorators who played with dolls as boys and do fem-bot jumps in the air in Uwe/Melody/JdN approved commercials.

Never saw the show, never heard of the guy, and the buyer was stupid to spend this kind of money really translates to, “this was important for me to read even though I claim to have never watched the show or know who Golden Globe, AFI and Emmy Award winning actor James Gandolfini is. Really I’m just jealous that someone had $120K to drop on something they’re that passionate about, and I don’t have that kind of Cheddar to chase my own interests. So instead, I’m going to call them stupid and mock the entertainment history significant vehicle. My life is sad.”

And yet Don Draper’s ’65 Cadillac Coupe deVille sold for less than half that amount? I haven’t seen enough Sopranos to judge the merits of one anti-hero over the other, but you’d have to be crazy to want an ’03 Escalade more than the deVille.

This is the answer. This wasn’t a vehicle purchase, but a memorabilia purchase that is associated with a dead actor from a classic television show. The price was probably too high, regardless, but the car itself is secondary.

I live on the other side of the world and even I know that the Sopranos is the most (pop)culturally significant TV show of our generation. But here are some Americans who haven’t seen it and know nothing about it, strange.

I guess you’ll have to better define “our generation” but both The Simpsons and Seinfeld had more cultural impact. Breaking Bad might be up there too. I was about 18 when The Sopranos came on, I stopped watching it in the beginning of the third season and haven’t seen an episode since. Just another mafia show which came at the end of a decade of major mafia movies. FWIW I thought “Oz” was a better show from what I remember.

Breaking Bad owes everything to the Sopranos. Every scripted show in the “new golden age of TV” owes fealty to Sopranos. Tony Soprano was the first big flawed antihero of the 2000s, and the huge character arc spawned a resurgence of scripted TV, leading to Breaking Bad as well as dozens (hundreds?) of character-driven shows.

If you mapped the influence of the Sopranos like some people map the influence of rock bands, I bet there’s a lot.

This thing is worth less to me than my 2004 Sienna on any day that I’m towing less than 3500lbs. Which is most days. Which is why I bought the Sienna. It would be worth more on days where i would be towing more than 3500lbs.

Gotta love these older Escalades, when there wasn’t even an attempt to disguise what they were underneath. Hey idiots, we put a wood steering wheel in a Subuarban and put a Cadillac badge on it. Pay us all the money.

“It doesn’t have a plush ride, still has rough edges, is unreliable, and is serviced by tatted felons.”

It may have been a lot of things, but unreliable it was not. Nothing wrong with a GM GMT-800 SUV in the reliability department. Easy to work on when they do break. Parts are plentiful and dirt cheap. Recommended all the time on Boating & RV forums to people looking for a good, older, reliable, and cheap tow vehicle.

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